Charterhouse. Latimer did not venture to refuse, but his extreme reluctance to comply with the request, may be seen in the following letter' written in reply.

66

Right honourable and my especial good lord.

"After my most hearty recommendations had to your good lordship. Whereas your lordship doth desire. . . . of your friends my house within Chartreux Churchyard beside so . . . . I assure your lordship the getting of a lease of it cost me 100 marcs, besides other pleasures (improvements) that I did to the house, for it was much my desire to have it, because it stands in good air, out of press of the city. And I do alway lie there when I come to London, and I have no other house to lie at. And, also, I have granted it to farm to Mr. Nudygate, (Newdigate,) son and heir to serjeant Nudygate, to lie in the said house in my absence. And he to void whensoever I come up to London. Nevertheless, I am contented, if it can do your lordship any pleasure for your friend, that he lie there forthwith. I seek my lodgings at this Michaelmas term myself. And as touching my lease, I assure your lordship it is not here, but I shall bring it right to your lordship at my coming up, at this said term, and then and alway I shall be at your lordship's commandment, as knows our Lord; who preserve your lordship in much honour to his pleasure. From Wyke, in Worcestershire, the last day of September. Your lordship's assuredly to command, "JOHN LATIMER."

To the right honourable and very especial

good lord, my Lord Privy Seal.

From this letter we may gather that the household arrangements of the second husband of Katherine Parr were of the same prudential character which induces many of the nobles of the present age to let their mansions ready furnished to wealthy commoners, when they retire to their country seats, with this difference-lord Latimer's arrangement with the heir of serjeant Newdigate was a perennial engagement, by which the tenant was to vacate the house when his duties in parliament or other business called his lordship to town. It must have been

1 Vespasian, F. xiii., 183, folio 131; an original document in the same volume of the Cottonian MSS., containing letters of Katharine Parr and other persons of her era.

"The Latimers were lords of Wyke Burnell, near Pershore, in Worcestershire, which was derived from the alliance of the Nevilles with the Beauchamps, earls of Warwick. Lord Latimer was evidently staying there when he wrote this letter.

a serious annoyance to all parties for the friend of my lord privy seal to take an impertinent fancy to occupy lord Latimer's town house under these circumstances; and yet, because the minister prefers the suit, the noble owner of the mansion is compelled to break his agreement with his tenant, and to seek for other lodgings for himself against the ensuing session of parliament, in order to accommodate a person who has evidently no claim on his courtesy. But a man who had been once in arms against the sovereign would, in that reign, be careful how he afforded cause for offence to one of the satellites of the crown. After his name had been connected with the pilgrimage of grace, lord Latimer had a delicate game to play, and it was well for him that his wife was related to the king, and the niece of a favoured member of the royal household, sir William Parr. Katharine's sister, lady Herbert, had an appointment in Jane Seymour's court, and assisted at the christening of Edward VI.

That Katharine Parr was not only acquainted with Henry VIII., but possessed a considerable influence. over his mind some years before there was the slightest probability of her ever becoming the sharer of his throne, is certified by the history of the Throckmorton family, to which we are principally indebted for the following details. Sir George Throckmorton, the husband of Katharine Parr's aunt, having incurred the ill will of lord Cromwell, in consequence of some disputes arising from the contiguity of their manors of Coughton Court and Oursley, Cromwell endeavoured to compass the ruin of his aristocratic neighbour, by accusing him of having denied the king's supremacy. The charge was peculiarly

IMS. Throckmorton, collated by Brown Willis. Among the incipient proofs of Cromwell's seizure of the Throckmorton property is his possession of a house in Throgmorton-street, where his oppression of his poor neighbours is commemorated by Stow, whose father was a sufferer. That the Throckmortons had a city house there is proved by the MS.

alarming to Throckmorton, because his brother Michael was in the service of cardinal Pole, and had taken an active part in opposing the king's divorce from Katharine of Arragon, as we are told by his kinsman in the following lines, from a metrical chronicle of the Life of sir Nicholas Throckmorton :

"For after that resolved stood the king

To take a new, and leave his wedded wife.
My uncle was a means to work the thing,
By Reynold Poole, who brewed all the strife,
And then at Rome did work the contrary,

Which drave the king at home to tyranny."

Throckmorton MS.1

The subject of sir George Throckmorton's imprisonment, and the distress of his family, is introduced in these quaint lines :—

"My father's foes clapt him, through cankered hate,

In Tower fast, and gaped to joint his neck;

They were in hope for to obtain a mate,
Who heretofore had laboured for a check;
Yea, Grevills grieved him ill without a cause!
Who hurt not them, nor yet the prince's laws.

“Thus everything did run against the hair;
Our name disgraced, and we but witless boys,
Did deem it hard such crosses then to bear-
Our minds more fit to deal with childish toys;
But troubles are of perfect wit the schools,
When life at will feeds men as fat as fools."

quoted above, where it mentions, that, after the death of Edward VI., the four sons of that family met there for a consultation

"In London, in a house that bore our name." Throgmorton House was evidently one of Cromwell's spoils, seized for a time from that family.

This curious literary treasure belongs to the Throckmorton MS., and contains some of the most remarkable passages in the life of sir Nicholas Throckmorton (the son of sir George and Katharine Parr's aunt), arranged in verse by his nephew, sir Thomas Throckmorton. The poem consists of 229 stanzas, of six lines each. The near relationship between queen Katharine Parr and the Throckmorton family renders it a valuable addition to the scanty records of this period of her life.

After drawing rather a ludicrous picture of their tribulations, and comparing lady Throckmorton in her tears to a drowned mouse, he introduces the family of Parr on the scene.

"While flocking foes to work our bane were bent,
While thunder-claps of angry Jove did last,
Then to lord Parr my mother' saw me sent,
So with her brother I was safely placed;
Of alms he kept me in extremity,

Who did misdoubt a worse calamity.

"Oh, lucky looks that fawned on Katharine Parr !
A woman rare like her but seldom seen,
To Borough first, and then to Latimer,
She widow was, and then became a queen;
My mother prayed her niece with watery eyes,
To rid both her and hers from endless cries.

"She, willing of herself to do us good,
Sought out the means her uncle's life to save;
And when the king was in his pleasing mood
She humbly then her suit began to crave;
With wooing times denials disagree,

She spake and sped-my father was set free!"

In his rapturous allusion to the good offices of Katharine Parr, the poet, by mentioning her subsequent marriage with the king, a little confuses the time when her intercession was successfully employed for the deliverance of sir George Throckmorton. The date of this event is clearly defined, in the prose documents of the Throckmorton family, to have taken place in the year 1540, by the statement that sir George was released through the influence of his kinswoman, the lady Katha

This lady was the daughter of Katharine's grandmother, widow of sir William Parr, K. G., by a second marriage with sir Nicholas Vaux; consequently, lady Throckmorton was sister, by the half blood, to Katharine Parr's father and uncle. Lord Vaux of Harrowden, the younger brother of lady Throckmorton, married Elizabeth Green, sister to lady Parr, and both these ladies were the grand-daughters of Matilda Throckmorton, whose stately monument is to be seen in the church of Green's. Norton. Thus we see the connexion of Katharine Parr with the family of Throckmorton was threefold.-Baker's Northamptonshire; Throckmorton Papers.

rine Parr, and advised with by the king, at her suggestion, about Cromwell, immediately before the arrest of that minister, which was in the June of that year. This fact throws a new light on the fall of Cromwell, and leads us to infer that his ruin was caused, not by the enmity of Katharine Howard, but of her unsuspected successor, Katharine Parr, at that time the wife of a zealous Catholic peer, and herself a member of the church of Rome. It was probably from the eloquent lips of this strongminded and intrepid lady, when pleading for the life of her uncle, that Henry learned the extent of Cromwell's rapacity, and the real state of the public mind as to his administration; and thus may we, perhaps, account for the otherwise mysterious change in the royal mind, when the monarch, after loading his favourite with honours and immunities, suddenly resolved to sacrifice him to popular indignation as a scapegoat, on whose shoulders the political sins of both king and council might be conveniently laid. Sir George Throckmorton took an active part in bringing his former persecutor to the block, and instead of being stripped by him of his fair domain of Coughton Court, was enabled to purchase Cromwell's manor of Oursley, on advantageous terms, of the crown, and to transmit it to his descendants, in whose possession it remains at the present day.

Few things, perhaps, tend more importantly to the elucidation of historical mysteries than the study of

This important incident is recorded in Brown Willis's History of the ancient family of Throckmorton, drawn up from the archives of that house in the year 1730. By the courtesy of the late venerable and lamented sir Charles Throckmorton, Bart., I have been favoured with some interesting and valuable extracts connected with the history of Katharine Parr, from that work and other family documents, which were kindly transcribed by our mutual friend, Miss Jane Porter, the accomplished author of Thaddeus of Warsaw and many other works, illustrative of the beauideal of heroism and virtue.

2 MS. Throckmorton. This statement is confirmed by Pollino, who says that Henry had secret consultations with a noble cavalier, called Roberto Trogmorton, in order to bring about the fall of Cromwell.